The 10 Best Danish Artists and Where to Find Them

Christina Malbek at Charlotte Fogh Gallery

Born in 1971, Christina Malbek lives and works in Copenhagen and, along with Jesper Just, was a 2003 graduate of the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts, and has since exhibited at contemporary art galleries including Sweden’s Göteborgs Konsthall and her hometown’s Den Frie Centre of Contemporary Art. Malbek creates inventive large-scale landscape paintings using modern techniques including digital media and airbrush graffiti, giving the age-old medium of landscape art a fresh and contemporary relevance. Using her own photography as a starting point, Malbek then digitally manipulates these images before projecting them onto canvas which she paints, resulting in fragmented and disjointed works that take the traditional tranquil beauty of landscape art and interweave it with a disquiet and complexity.

See Christina Malbek’s work at Charlotte Fogh Gallery, Mejlgade 18B, Aaarhus C, Denmark, +45 29 29 71 05

Sculptor Jens Galschiøt rose to fame both in his homeland and internationally for his politically provocative creations that seek to expose global injustice. His work is best viewed at his very own Gallery Galschiøt in Odense, which offers the unique experience of viewing the artist himself at work in his studio, and a number of his prominent sculptures can be found in the gallery’s exhibition spaces and sculpture park. Galschiøt is perhaps best known for his Pillar of Shame (1996 – 2000) sculpture series which were erected at sites of political significance to remind people of shameful historical events, and The Hunger March (2001), 27 bronze sculptures of starving African children which he has exhibited at several public sites to protest against hunger and social injustice. Both works are on display at Gallery Galschiøt’s sculpture park.

SUPERFLEX at Nils Stærk

Founded in 1993 by artists Bjørnstjerne Reuter Christiansen, Jakob Enger and Rasmus Nielsen, SUPERFLEX is a Copenhagen-based art collective whose work comprises a series of projects that meet somewhere between art, design, commerce and a redefinition of economic and political relationships. Within a few years of forming, SUPERFLEX won the 1997 International Association of Art Critics Annual Prize for Denmark, which recognizes significant contributions to Danish art, and today their work appears in public collections at New York’s MoMA and the FRAC Nord-Pas de Calais in France. SUPERFLEX’s works include Euro (2012), a billboard depicting a digitally doctored Euro coin devoid of its monetary value, and film Flooded McDonald’s (2009), in which an exact replica of a McDonald’s is gradually flooded with water, linking the activities of global corporations with pressing environmental issues.

See SUPERFLEX’s work at Nils Stærk, Ny Carlsberg Vej 68, Copenhagen V, Denmark, +45 32 54 45 62

Olafur Eliasson at Andersen’s Contemporary

Danish-Icelandic artist Olafur Eliasson was born in Copenhagen where he graduated from the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts in 1995. Eliasson works with sculptures and large-scale installations that ingeniously employ different elements like water, light and air to immerse the viewers’ senses in his work. Eliasson often works collaboratively with specialists to create certain pieces as with The Mediated Motion (2001), an installation created with landscape artist Gunther Vogt which led viewers through landscapes of water, soil and fog and filled all four floors of the Kunsthaus Bregenz where it was exhibited. The 2014 recipient of the prestigious Eugene McDermott Award in the Arts other works include The Weather Project (2003), a popular exhibition in which Eliasson recreated mist using humidifiers and a sun using hundreds of yellow-colored bulbs that attracted a million visitors.

See Olafur Eliasson’s work at Andersen’s Contemporary, Amager Strandvej 50B, Copenhagen S, Denmark, +45 32 95 92 35

Søren Jensen, Profan Teater, 2013 /Jan Søndergaard. Courtesy of Galerie Mikael Andersen

Copenhagen-based sculptor and installation artist Søren Jensen, a former rector at the independent visual arts school Funen Art Academy and 2004 recipient of the Eckersberg Medal awarded by his alma mater the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts, creates pieces that explore the function of sculpture in postmodern society. By taking familiar, commonplace objects and stripping them of their function he highlights their aesthetic qualities instead, as with ‘Profan Kano’ (2010), a boat with colorful bunting in place of sails – pretty but devoid of its function. His later work examines the relation between show and art as in his latest exhibition Profane Theatre (2014), an installation comprised of costumes, hand puppets, masks and a video playing a theatrical piece that is in itself a performance. Jacob Dahlstrup, Home By The Sea, 2014. Courtesy of Jacob Dahlstrup & Gallery Poulsen

Jacob Dahlstrup at Gallery Poulsen

Born in 1985, Jacob Dahlstrup is a Copenhagen-based artist and recent graduate of the Glasgow School of Art’s Bachelor of Fine Arts programme. A current member of the Danish Visual Arts Association, Dahlstrup has only been exhibiting his work since 2008 but has already presented his art across Denmark and in the UK, France and New York. Dahlstrup creates sculptures and highly detailed drawings, the latter using graphite pencils on paper that he embosses by hand sometimes employing a tattoo needle to produce his intricate images. Influenced by traditional tattoo culture, his work has often featured a maritime theme with seafaring captains, ships and skulls predominating, while other pieces like ‘Home By The Sea’ (2014) and ‘Lost In Space’ (2013) depict surreal and imaginative seascapes and moonscapes that evoke exploration of the vast unknown.
See Jacob Dahlstrup’s work at Gallery Poulsen, Flæsketorvet 24, Copenhagen V, Denmark, +45 33 33 93 96

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